TELEVISION

TELEVISION; Film About a Fatal Beating Examines a Community

By DAVID A. KAPLAN; David A. Kaplan, senior writer for The National Law Journal in New York, reports frequently on the arts and legal issues.

Published: July 16, 1989

Seven summers ago, on a mean June night outside a McDonald's in Detroit, a young Chinese-American engineer named Vincent Chin was beaten to death with a baseball bat by Ronald Ebens, a Chrysler foreman. Mr. Ebens - who is caucasian - confessed, pleaded guilty to manslaughter and never spent a day in jail.

The 1982 killing and ensuing legal denouement enraged the local and national Asian-American communities, who saw the case as an example of manifest racial violence. The Federal Government prosecuted Mr. Ebens (along with his stepson, Michael Nitz, who restrained Mr. Chin during the clubbing) on civil rights grounds, but ultimately lost in 1987.

Two New York film makers, Christine Choy and Renee Tajima, subsequently made a ''Rashomon''-style documentary that explores the legal and social ambiguities of the case. ''Who Killed Vincent Chin?,'' which will have its television premiere this week on the Public Broadcasting Service, allows the real-life characters - the killers, the witnesses, the lawyers, the Asian-American activists and relatives of Vincent Chin - to tell their stories in a way that proves reality may not be a fixed point. For those who believe that the 27-year-old Chin died because of bigotry, the case is a beacon of injustice; for others, including the two men who admitted killing him, Vincent Chin was simply the tragic victim of a barroom brawl.

The 82-minute film, nominated for an Academy Award earlier this year, opens the second season of public television's ''P.O.V.'' series, a showcase for independent documentaries (it's title is a shooting-script abbreviation for ''point of view''). It will be broadcast nationally on Tuesday at 10 P.M., and in New York City on Channel 13 on Thursday at 9 P.M.

When the film had its theatrical debut in 1988 - the release, though extremely limited, made it eligible for an Oscar - Vincent Canby of The New York Times wrote that it ''so successfully analyzed this sudden, sad, fatal confrontation that almost everything except the Big Mac becomes implicated in the events.''

Who did kill Vincent Chin? Obviously, the literal answer to the documentary's title is Ronald Ebens and his grown stepson. Yet, the film, through its many layers, aims to ask more subtle questions about the struggles of Asian immigrants in blue-collar Detroit, different cultural notions of responsibility, the ugliness of language and the nature of American law.

''We're not just film makers,'' says Ms. Tajima. ''We're Asian-American film makers. But we wanted to be self-critical. We tried to make a film that showed this civil rights case wasn't so simple.''

Through first-person accounts, along with TV news footage and the beat of Motown, the film makers have not only detailed the killing but taken the economic and psychological pulse of Detroit that they believe made the crime possible. There is no narration and the structure is loose.

''The film is not built on logic but on emotion,'' Ms. Choy says. ''Once you respond to the emotion, we hope you'll find the logic. It doesn't work the other way around.''

On the night of June 19, 1982, Vincent Chin was out on the town with his friends, celebrating the waning days of his bachelorhood. They stopped at the Fancy Pants, a topless bar in the Highland Park area of Detroit. Across the runway from where the dancers did their tease sat Ronald Ebens and Michael Nitz, a laid-off Chrysler assembly-line worker.

While the precise details vary about what ensued, Mr. Chin got into a fight with the two, apparently concerning some vulgar remarks Mr. Ebens made about why so many Detroit whites were out of jobs. (He presumably blamed Japanese car makers, making the remark to Mr. Chin without realizing he was Chinese.) The bar owner threw everybody out. Words were then exchanged in the parking lot, where Mr. Nitz went into his car and pulled out a Louisville Slugger. Mr. Chin and his friends ran away. In pursuit, Mr. Ebens and Mr. Nitz cruised the neighborhood in their Plymouth, eventually finding Mr. Chin in a nearby McDonald's.

Mr. Chin tried to escape but was caught by Mr. Nitz, who held him while Mr. Ebens repeatedly attacked with the bat. There were many witnesses, including two off-duty Detroit police officers. Though Mr. Ebens and Mr. Nitz were taken to the station house, they were not charged until much later.

The Choy-Tajima film presents these details primarily through interviews with all the participants, other than Vincent Chin. Mr. Ebens, who no longer works at Chrysler, asserts that the entire incident was an ''accident,'' the product of booze and temper rather than racial animus. Vincent Chin's mother, Lily Chin, says the legal process ignored her. The Fancy Pants dancers as well as Vincent's friends and the policemen give their accounts. And the state judge who sentenced both defendants to three years' probation and a $3,000 fine explains that all Mr. Ebens and Mr. Nitz intended to do was ''administer a punishment'' to Mr. Chin. ''Had it been a brutal murder,'' Judge Charles Kaufman adds, ''of course these guys would be in jail.''